Grimes’s Ford was parked at the curb. The address it belonged to was typical of the meager houses so prevalent here. A very slanted roof covered a gray stucco one-story home. A long piece of tape covered the crack in the lighted front window. The metal railing on the three front steps leaned so far backward it appeared ready to fall off. A push lawnmower stood in the center of the miniature front lawn. Unlike the other midget lawns nearby, this one was clean of beer cans and scraps of paper.
The street was busy with open-windowed cars blasting both rap and country music. A number of the cars had the kind of mufflers that rumbled. A pair of very young teenage girls in tight jeans and even tighter sweaters strolled down the sidewalk on my side of the street. They were almost comically conscious of the admiring looks, shouts and horn blasts of the boys cruising past. They were babes all right, but in this neighborhood they wouldn’t be babes for long. Pregnancy, drugs or husbands with mean intent would make them old and sad before they reached twenty.
I locked the car and walked to the porch. The wood beneath me was weak with age.
The colored lights of a TV screen played on the taped window. From what I could gather it was a crime show of some kind. The music was the tip-off.
I knocked. No responding sound. The TV volume stayed the same, no footsteps on the floor inside and no voice acknowledging the knock.
This time I knocked much harder — three times.
When I didn’t get any response, I stepped up to the window and peeked in.
The order and neatness of the living room triumphed over the worn and threadbare furnishings. Framed faded photographs lined the wall above the couch with the flowery slipcovers. I counted twelve, thirteen, fourteen framed photos of the same woman at various ages. I was sure there would be others throughout the house.
Lying in front of the swaybacked couch was Frank Grimes. Somebody using something had struck him in the forehead. He now lay face-up with a massive purple wound above his left eye.
‘Who’re you?’
A female voice from behind me. Because of the shadowy streetlight I couldn’t see much of her. Long blonde hair, an angular face, a slender, tall body in a Levi’s jacket, white blouse and jeans. Oh — and a handgun.
‘Did you hear me? I asked who you are.’
I took a chance. ‘I’m the guy you’ve been calling. Dev Conrad.’
‘Oh, my God.’ She seemed to forget she was the one holding the gun. But any authority the gun had given had faded when I told her my name. ‘How did you find me?’
‘I found Frank, and that led me to you. And speaking of Frank, he’s not in very good shape right now. He’s lying on the floor in there with a bad wound on his forehead.’
‘What? Oh, God, poor Granddad!’
She ran straight up the steps, brushing past me to get to the door. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘hold this,’ and jammed the gun into my hand. It was the latest version of a single-action, semi-automatic Browning that had been used in all our wars, starting with WWI.
She dropped the house key and had to scramble for it in the dark. In the meantime, she yelled, ‘Granddad! Granddad!’
She was so disturbed I had to find the key for her. She got it in the lock, slammed the door inward and went straight to him. The way she checked his vitals indicated that she’d had at least minimal medical training of some kind.
‘Please help me get him on the couch. He has terrible heart problems. He’s lucky to be alive.’
He was heavier than I would have thought. Just before we laid him carefully on the cheap, ruined couch his eyes opened and he groaned.
Once we got his body lying flat and straight she plucked a throw pillow from a nearby tattered armchair and set it under his head.
‘Watch him. I’ll be right back.’
He was hurt, no doubt about it, but not hurt enough to be civil. ‘What the hell are you doin’ here?’
‘You know who did this to you?’
He moved his head faster than was wise and paid for it. His face cramped with pain. He grumbled and then cursed. ‘You son of a bitch. I asked you a question. What the hell’re you doing here?’
‘I’ve been looking for you.’
‘Well, don’t. You’re a stupid bastard.’ A cringe; he’d moved his head abruptly again. ‘You’re getting into something you don’t understand and you’re going to get somebody killed.’
Cindy was back with an official-looking white first-aid kit. ‘I’m a nurse.’ She said this as she brushed me aside. She was getting good at it. First on the porch and now as I stood by the couch. Apparently I was a piece of human furniture.
As she hunched down to begin her examination, she glanced up at me with a freckled Midwestern-girl face that was a little too spare to be pretty but had a friendly, intelligent appeal to the dark eyes and full mouth.
I got the job of holding the flashlight and beaming it at the wound while she examined it.
‘Do you have a headache?’
‘Do I have a headache? Of course I have a headache, honey.’
She had brought along a cup of hot water and a clean cloth. She cleaned the wound — a deep horizontal gash about the length of his eyebrow — and examined his eyes for signs of a concussion. Then she used an antiseptic on the trauma area.
‘We’ll need to get this stitched up.’
‘Oh, no, honey, you’re not getting me in any hospital.’
‘He’s terrified of hospitals, Mr Conrad.’
‘I had too many friends die in them after Nam.’
‘That’s because they’d been seriously wounded, Granddad. We’ll just go to the ER.’
‘The ER is the hospital.’
‘It’s part of the hospital but for a few stitches they won’t admit you. Now be quiet and let me finish my work.’
She made him take two aspirin, which he objected to. And she took his temperature for a second time, which he also objected to.
‘You’re a terrible patient, Granddad.’
‘Aw, honey, you know I love you and I appreciate all your concern. It’s just all this medical stuff scares me. You know that.’ The tenderness in his voice came as a shock.
‘Now we have to sit up and go to the hospital.’
‘I have a big car,’ I said. ‘You can sit in the backseat with him while I drive.’
‘Oh, no, I don’t want nothin’ to do with him and you shouldn’t either, honey. He just wants to get you alone so he can ask you a bunch of questions.’
‘I need to know who hit you and you know why he hit you. You’re holding back and I don’t know why. I’m trying to help you.’
‘See what I’m saying?’ he shouted.
She was standing now and looking at me. ‘Well, I think I do owe him some sort of explanation, Granddad. So c’mon, let’s let him give us a ride to the ER.’
Eighteen
No wives or girlfriends beaten badly, no drunks injured in tavern fights, no victims of car or motorcycle accidents. These would appear later. It was not quite eight-thirty and the patients in the ER ran to kids with broken fingers, arms and ankles, and elderly patients suffering from age.
The large white room with as many as twenty-five colored plastic chairs for patients had an empty feeling, in fact. No crying babies, no sobbing wives, no drunks escorted by police officers.
After the paperwork was finished Frank Grimes was immediately taken to a room down the hall. So we sat there among the antiseptic smells and the constant ringing of phones and the techs who brought patients back to their loved ones, and for the first time Cindy told me about herself and her situation.